Creating an environment for broadband and broadcasting to complement each other is the key to realising a beneficial information society, the President of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), Yoshinori Imai, has said. He told the UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development in New York that broadband and broadcasting each had its own distinctive advantage.

“What’s at stake now is not the choice between them but an effective hybrid of the two,” he said. “Broadcasting is a one-way but very low cost universal service that provides a simultaneous and rapid transmission of quality information and entertainment. We at NHK, along with other public service broadcasters in Europe, have just begun an initiative for a new broadcasting format which provides seamless links with broadband capabilities.”

Mr Imai said a second hybrid was that of technology and content. To create reliable, quality content that travelled on the network, broadband could take full advantage of the accumulated expertise of broadcasting in information gathering and content production. He called for a constructive deliberation among all stakeholders for a fair and balanced spectrum allocation and assignment, as more broadcasters switched from analogue to digital.

Mr Imai is a founding Commissioner of the Broadband Commission, established by UNESCO and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in May. It brings together leaders in government, business, civil society and international organisations. The commission’s role is to provide broad policy guidelines for the development of a strategic framework to accelerate the deployment of universal access to a broadband network.